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Was A $38,000 Piece Of Dota 2 Loot Just Patched To Worthlessness?

When it comes to digital goods, the words “caveat emptor” should probably be printed on the bottom of every receipt. So it may be for the Dota 2player who paid $38,000 in a transaction negotiated on Reddit in a sale posted by the collector “PAADA” for a rare Ethereal Flame pink war dog.

This probably needs breaking down slightly. Dota 2 is a a multiplayer online arena game published by Valve Software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, in which teams of players compete against each other to destroy the other’s “Ancient”.

The war dog is a type of courier – an in-game animal which ferries purchases from the item shops in the Dota 2 arena to the players, to avoid a player having to leave the front lines.

The particular monetization model Valve chose for DOTA 2 has couriers available for cash purchase in-store, with ”commemorative” couriers available as promotional tools for particular DOTA 2 events (both real-world, like the million-dollar International championships, and virtual). Others are randomly awarded in treasure chests awarded at irregular intervals within the game. As is by now standard, the treasure chest is free and the key costs money, but promises a selection of high-quality booty.

A war dog is a rara avis, or more accurately a rara canis. However, the true rarity value of this particular war dog came from the random allocation of both the pink color and the Ethereal Flame effect – a blaze of fire around its paws. This was what made it so unusual, and resulted in its inordinately high $38,000 “buyout” (i.e. auction-ending) sale price, which was met by an anonymous bidder known as July.24 through an intermediary.

The comedown

The real-world value of online loot is a much-explored concept, notably in Julian Dibbell’s Play Moneyand the work of Edward Castronova. Valve Software, the creators of Dota 2 (so called due to a contretemps over the ownership of the name Defence of the Ancients) hired an economist in residence to examine the complexities of the “hat economy”. Ultimately, if somebody is able and willing to pay $38,000 for a rare virtual good, then that is what it is worth – and the auction was closed before the scheduled date of November 16 when an offer of that size came in.

Which creates an interesting situation, as today an update to Dota2 – the “Three Spirits” update – has turned color and “ ethereal effect” from inherent qualities of unusual items in the game(such as couriers) to qualities that can be conferred by gems. The economists of the message boards are still working out what this might mean for the buyer of the $38,000 dog, and whether they have bought a metaphorical as well as a virtual dog.

Dota 2 – at the time of writing, 6.5 million people were logged in and playing.

The best case scenario is probably that instead of having an incredibly rare courier, the buyer will have a courier with an incredibly rare pink gem, which could theoretically be broken out of the courier and added to a yet more rare item, creating another item of high value. The worst case is that a pink prismatic gem is introduced, making the very rare gem possessed by the buyer a very rare prismatic gem with an aesthetic effect indistinguishable from far less rare gems.

For Valve, this is probably an instance of flattening out an overheated unofficial market (hyperrare confluences of creature, color and graphical flair) by introducing two less heated official markets (prismatic and particle effect gems). Clearly, the timing of the update is unconnected to a specific purchase. Forbes.com has reached out to Valve for comment.

As for the buyer – one imagines (and hopes) that anyone who spends $38,000 on a virtual item the existence and value of which are totally at the mercy of a software company has enough money not to feel any potential drop in value. The extent to which this item can ever have been said to be worth $38,000 is, frankly, open to challenge. Clearly it was worth $38,000 to somebody, but if that person could not find any other person willing to pay the same amount, then amortization is clearly at work in a hypertrophic form. This is the purchasing world of the free-to-play whale, where value is calculated in terms of peer approval, status and self-worth as much as what we might laughingly call the rational agents of the market, such as use value and appreciation.

Ironically, this story about animal spirits is very much about the Animal Spirits.

However, anyone mocking the buyer who trades in their car for a new model every year should probably take a hard look at the money they are throwing away in the interests of status.

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Comments

The Pink Colour is a Legacy (the first ones, buggy ones) colour and cannot be obtained anymore. It was extremely rare before and will stay extremely rare, this is what this combination worth so much. There is to believe that about 4 Couriers of the same Type as the Dog exist. The Price will sink but since ou could embed a pink colour which will be pricey as hell with an ethereal flame wardog yes, but not by that much.